Here’s a sprawling (5,100 word—but beautifully illustrated) New York Times Darien Gap article A Ticket to Disney’? Politicians Charge Millions to Send Migrants to U.S., by Julie Turkewitz, September 14, 2023. [Archive link]
Who is running the multimillion $$$ migration business in the Darién?
— julieturkewitz (@julieturkewitz) September 14, 2023
Local politicians, prominent businessmen and elected leaders — all out in the open, while Colombia's national gov largely stays away.
A complex human story, told with @federicorios. https://t.co/MbuDAnyEFA
Buried in a welter of human-interest anecdotes are some significant and highly alarming facts for those who care about the evolving trend in U.S. immigration. (That does not include the Biden Administration.)
More than 360,000 people have already crossed the jungle in 2023, according to the Panamanian government, surpassing last year’s almost unthinkable record of nearly 250,000…
In August alone, almost 82,000 people made the trek through the Darién, according to Panamanian officials, by far the largest single-month total on record.
August annualizes to 1,032,000. President Petro of Colombia is quoted saying he expects 2024 Darien crossings to be 1 million. That assumes a sudden halting of the tremendous growth rate of the past couple of years.
Local entrepreneurs on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, up by the Panamanian border, do not expect any slowing. The article extensively documents how efficiently they have geared up to handle massive traffic. They are a credit to Free Enterprise.
Needless to say, they are very happy, and many are quoted to this effect.
The hub of this traffic is the town of Necocli which I first noted in THEY’RE COMING! One Billion-Plus Chinese “Economic Migrants” Now Know About The Darien Gap. The NYT observes:
The streets of Necoclí are now filled with people speaking Mandarin, Persian and Nepali.
…the entrepreneurs behind the migrant gold rush are not underground smugglers hiding from the authorities.
They are politicians, prominent businessmen and elected leaders, now sending thousands of migrants toward the United States in plain sight each day—and charging millions of dollars a month for the privilege.
She provides much evidence for this.
When the national authorities can be seen at all, they are often waving migrants through, or in the case of the national police, fist-bumping the men selling expensive travel packages through the jungle.
(In the Chinese/Darien story above police were reported as active recruiters for the traffickers.)
Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro… added that it was not his goal to stop migration through the Darién anyway—despite the agreement his government signed with the United States.
After all, he argued, the roots of this migration were “the product of poorly taken measures against Latin American peoples,” particularly by the United States.
Apparently, he told Turkewitz the local Traffickers are making $30 million a year. Could he be getting a share?
White House officials say they believe that the Colombian government is following through on its commitment to crack down on illicit migration.
This Darien news guarantees crossings of the U.S. Border will accelerate—probably massively, as the well-financed Chinese get going.
Without the Democrats’ No Borders policy, this invasion would not be happening
Peter Brimelow is right: Why Is McCarthy Impeaching Biden Over Corruption, Not Border Treason?
